Fringe street events

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During the Fringe, the Society manages two vibrant street performance spaces in the heart of the city.

These areas are on the Royal Mile (between Cockburn Street and George IV Bridge, also known as High Street) and the Mound Precinct.

These spaces become the focus of the festival atmosphere that takes over Edinburgh in August, with thousands of locals and tourists mingling to see the spectacular acts that travel from all over the world to entertain the crowds. Our dedicated Virgin Money Street Events team schedule stages and other street performance areas.

Our Street Events team provides the infrastructure and necessary permissions for this spectacular event to take place. They ensure the street performance areas are a safe and fun, family environment with equal opportunity for all to participate.

Types of Street Events

As part of registration, you will be asked to identify within one of the following categories of Street Events.

Fringe Groups - Fringe Groups will have already registered with the Fringe Society and appear in the Fringe programme. Performance slots are available throughout the day on the three stages on the Royal Mile. The slots are designed to give audiences a taste of your main show and last 20 minutes.

Buskers - We categorise Buskers as performers who are able to work within a small area, performing to passing crowds. Slots last 30 minutes - with five minutes to introduce your act and 25 minutes to perform.

Street performers (Circle Shows) - Street performers perform within large circles of people. They are capable of entertaining crowds hundreds strong for 45 minutes with a combination of circus skills and comedy. You should only register for these slots if you are an experienced street performer.

Living statues - The term living statue refers to a mime artist who poses like a statue, sometimes with realistic, statue-like make-up. We require a level of experience in this category.

Portrait artists / caricaturists - Portrait artists and caricaturists set up close to St. Giles on the Royal Mile and draw / paint paying customers.

Pipers (Bagpipes) - We have limited spaces and time slots for Pipers as these instruments are loud but we do accept some applications.

Finale shows - Got something big and noisy? These slots are for large, loud groups that we are unable to programme anywhere else. In the past we've had samba groups, choirs, pipe bands and percussion bands.

Festival Services - We have limited slots for some service providers such as hair braiding, face painting, henna artists, balloon modelling, palm reading, massage etc. These are not trading spots so you cannot sell products for customers to take away. We have spaces for experienced and professional providers in this category.

Other - We try to accommodate as many artists as possible at the Fringe Street Events. If you do something that doesn't fit into any of the above categories, please register under the ‘other’ category and let us know what you want to do.